The Bad Guys
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 They may be bad, but this movie is anything but bad.
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The Bad Guys is a 2022 American computer-animated crime heist comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and Scholastic Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures. It is directed by Pierre Perifel (in his feature directorial debut) from a screenplay by Etan Cohen, loosely based on the children's book series of the same name by Aaron Blabey, who serves as executive producer. The film stars the voices of Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Anthony Ramos, Craig Robinson, Awkwafina, Richard Ayoade, Zazie Beetz, Lilly Singh, and Alex Borstein.
The Bad Guys were released in Israel on March 16, 2022 and was officially released in the United States on April 22, 2022, by Universal Pictures, in 2D and RealD 3D.
Plot
After a lifetime of legendary heists, notorious criminals Mr. Wolf, Mr. Snake, Mr. Piranha, Mr. Shark and Ms. Tarantula are finally caught. To avoid a prison sentence, the animal outlaws must pull off their most challenging con yet -- becoming model citizens. Under the tutelage of their mentor, Professor Marmalade, the dubious gang sets out to fool the world that they're turning good.
Why It's Anything But Bad
- Much like other movies, such as The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and to a lesser extent, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, the film’s character designs and animation style both look very unique and incredible for DreamWorks standards, being compared favorably to Lupin the Third.
- It is faithful to the children's book series by Aaron Blabey who, as mentioned earlier, also serves as an executive producer.
- The humor is highly enjoyable, like the scene where Mr. Wolf attempts to pull himself and his gang out of the gala by using his grappling hook gun. It fails utterly when the hook clips onto his pants and instead pulls them up, revealing him to be wearing pink boxers with white hearts. Everyone stares at him, surprised. Another example is when Mr. Shark eats Mr. Snake over a push-pop, with the latter claiming it was totally worth it.
- A funny running gag present in the movie is that there are always hundreds of police cops when our protagonists get caught up in a chase or trying to escape. One would wonder how much police are needed to apprehend criminals.
- While it is similar to Megamind (another DreamWorks Animation movie) and the first Despicable Me movie, the film does seem to know what it is, so it tries to win us over with its humor, action, and unique characters instead of the story and growth, and it succeeded at that almost 100%.
- Fun and fast-paced action scenes, notably the chase sequence between the Bad Guys and the police in the beginning of the movie.
- It gives the creative twist on the heist genre, similar what Shrek did on fairy tales, and what Kung Fu Panda did for the kung fu genre.
- The movie draws drew inspiration from various crime films and anime series for characters and themes such as the Ocean's Eleven franchise, Lupin III, Pulp Fiction, Beastars, The Fifth Element, Sherlock Holmes, Heat, Reservoir Dogs, Ernest & Celestine.
- In fact, speaking of Ocean's Eleven, there was even a reference to the franchise's lead star, George Clooney, given in pieces of two pieces of dialogue.
- Very likable and believable characters, notably the Bad Guys (Mr. Wolf, Mr. Piranha, Mr. Snake, Mr. Shark, and Ms. Tarantula), who might be a gang of criminals, but still have a lot of care for one another, and Diane Foxington, aka the Crimson Paw.
- Though he is predictable, Professor Marmalade is a decent villain, who does have interesting design and accurate British accent.
- The DreamWorks logo comes with a new twist: Mr. Wolf uses his grappling hook to climb the moon and lies down on it, replacing the moon boy, which is nice nod to the film itself.
- This film actually handles redemption in a well-written manner. This is important since most redemption nowadays are forced in stories to impress liberal parents/moral guardians.
- Daniel Pemberton's score is awesome.
- "Good Tonight", the song Mr. Piranha sings at the gala, is an amazing, upbeat tune that shows off Anthony Ramos' vocals perfectly.
- The cast has fantastic chemistry among each other, leading to such fun quotes like:
- "We may be bad, but we're so good about it."
- “I think I hate you.”
- "Pop me, please?"
- "Don't mind us, we're just robbing this place"
- "The old switcheroo."
- "Being good, just feels so good. And when you're good... you're loved."
- "Go bad?"
- "Or go home."
Bad Qualities
- The story is pretty predictable. While watching the film, you can tell what's gonna happen next.
- Speaking of predictable, Professor Marmalade, while not the worst as some other twist villains like Guy Gagne from Turbo, is predictable twist villain as stated above, due to the books featuring him.
- Some characters such as Chief Luggins and Tiffany Fluffit can be seen as unlikable.
- While the humor is very funny, some jokes can be a hit-or-miss, such as Piranha's constant farting.
- The pacing can get a bit too fast in certain scenes.
- While overall faithful to Blabey's book series, it was sort of unnecessary to change Ms. Tarantula's gender for the film (she was actually a male in the books, Mr. Tarantula, before the switch to a female).
Reception
The Bad Guys got positive reviews. Most DreamWorks fans were disappointed with the studio's subpar output last year, only to be blown away by this film's endearing and well-developed characters, stunning animation, and witty (if not entirely original) writing, while the twist villain was disliked. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Bad Guys holds an approval rating of 88% based on 155 reviews, with an average rating of 6.90/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Fast-paced, funny, and full of colorful visual appeal, The Bad Guys is good news for audiences seeking options the whole family can enjoy.", while audiences consensus reads, "The Bad Guys' eye-catching animation will entertain the kids, parents will appreciate the movie's message, and the wall-to-wall jokes will keep the whole family laughing.". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, has assigned the film a score of 64 out of 100 based on 24 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an average score of 4 out of 5 stars.
Videos
Trailers
Reviews
Trivia
- This marks the first DreamWorks Animation movie not to use the normal music for the Universal Pictures logo.
- Originally, Marmalade was going to reveal himself to be an alien like in the book, but was left out of the film and saved for a potential sequel.
- During the opening scene, it was credited as DreamWorks Animation Studios.
- The $100 bills in the movie feature the face of Margie Cohn, President of DreamWorks.
- The novel based on the film was released nearly two months before the film itself. Because the novel comes from an earlier draft of the film, some dialog and scenes are slightly different from the film. Notably, the Love Crater Meteorite is described as glowing pink, which was before the film's color coding was finalized and the glow was changed to blue.
- A prequel short film based on the film, The Bad Guys in Maraschino Ruby, was announced in the Blu-ray and Digital release with a story made and directed by head of story Nelson Yokota and produced by Angie Howard while executive produced by Pierre Perifel, Damon Ross, Rebecca Huntley and Michael Vollman.
- The German dub of the second trailer was met with extremely negative reactions from the social media. While the first one was dubbed by professional and well-known voice actors, the other trailer revealed that the actual German voice cast consisted of B-list celebrities and YouTubers. It was widely ridiculed as a "bad fan-dub" or a "porn dub", and petitions were started to convince the studio to use the professional voice actors from the first trailer.
- This is the first DreamWorks Animation film to feature "Universal Pictures presents" in the opening credits.
- This is also the first DreamWorks Animation film to have a distribution company present one since Shrek 2 with DreamWorks Pictures.
- In April 2022, after the film was released, Perifel said that he would love to do a sequel.
- This is the first animated movie of 2022 to have a worldwide theatrical release.
- Just before its planned release date of March 24, 2022 in that country, Universal Pictures joined an economic boycott of Russia, leading to the releases of all Universal films, including The Bad Guys, being delayed indefinitely there.
- In the books, Tiffany Fluffit is depicted as a cat rather than a human.
- A poster of the short film Bilby, also directed by Perifel, makes an Easter egg appearance in a scene where mind-controlled guinea pigs break out of their cages.
- It opens with Mr. Wolf and Mr. Snake talking to each other before they rob a bank. This is done as one continuous shot with no cuts lasting two minutes, 25 seconds and seven frames. The longest one-shot in Dreamworks Animation history.
- Aaron Blabey's name makes an appearance in a newspaper article.
- Ms. Tarantula was going to be blue but was changed to orange due to the theme of the color.